Polish Learning Community and Resources

Today, March 8th is International Women’s Day, on this occasion I’d like to share with you portraits of four Polish women who made a change and who, I’m sure, will continue to inspire many of the generations to come. 

Nawojka [Source: krakow.pl]

This semi-legendary woman lived sometime in early 15th century and is considered to be the first Polish female student. We know very little about her background, but most likely she came from a well-off family from the area of Gniezno (the first Polish capital city). Home schooled, she was able to read and write in Polish and in Latin. Around the age of 15 (likely between 1400-1420) she came to Cracow. As you can imagine, at that time, women weren’t allowed to study, therefore Nawojka decided to disguise herself as a man and enrolled in the Cracow Academy (currently Jagiellonian University) as Jakub. She studied successfully for three years and, right before her exams, unfortunately, she was exposed. For the love of study, she risked death penalty but thanks to her excellent academic records and very good opinion from her professors and colleagues she was saved. She was sent to a convent, where she become an abbess and continued her life teaching literacy to the nuns. Unfortunately, Jagiellonian University allowed women to study only after 1897 and hold academic positions after 1906. Polish women were legally allowed to study at all universities only from 1918 – rules who forced our next heroine to study abroad. 

Marie Curie  [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

I believe I don’t need to introduce this person to anyone. Marie Curie, or, as she’s known in Poland – Maria Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and, by far, the only woman who won the Noble Prize twice! She’s also the only person who won a Nobel Prize in two fields, together with her husband – Pierre Curie they were the first married couple to win the Nobel Prize, but that’s not all, her daughter – Irène Joliot-Curie also won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. What a family! Maria Skłodowska was born in 1867 in Warsaw when Poland was under Russian rule, since she couldn’t formally enrol in any university, she followed lectures at an underground ”university”. In order to continue her education and earn a degree she moved to Paris where she was able to ultimately unleash her scientific potential and conduct her research in chemistry, which made her worldwide famous and gained her universal recognition. In 1906 she became the first female professor at Sorbonne! She was also the first woman buried on merit in the Panthéon in Paris. According to various sources, even after becoming a French citizen, she continued to consider herself Polish. She was known to be really hard-working and she had an unshakeable belief in the beauty of science. She once said: Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. 

Irena Sendler  [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

Irena Sendler (also: Sendlerowa) – 1910-2008 was a Polish social worker. During her university years she was often defending her Jewish friends and openly opposed ‘ghetto benches’ (getto ławkowe) – official segregation requiring Jews to sit separately from non-Jews in the classroom. Because of her activism, she faced discrimination and had trouble getting a job, since the university was issuing negative recommendations about her, criticising her for her leftist views. Later she worked in social help clinics, mostly helping children born out of wedlock and their mothers. During WWII she was helping Jews – she would visit the Warsaw Ghetto multiple times during the day bringing food, clothing and medicine even though providing any assistance to Jews in that period carried severe punishments. Together with her collaborators, she was helping Jews and Jewish children escape from the ghetto for instance by providing false documents or hiding them. In 1943 she was imprisoned and tortured but thanks to her collaborators she was liberated a month after. Irena Sendler and her collaborators attempted to save around 2500 Jewish children. Herself, Irena Sendler refused to give any number of saved children, she insisted that she did so little and that much more could have been done. She said about herself: I was brought up to believe that you need to help those in need. That’s why I’m not a hero. 

Olga Tokarczuk [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

I believe that this is yet another name that needs no introductions – a recent (2018) Nobel Prize winner – Olga Tokarczuk. A psychologist by education and a writer by profession is one of the most translated contemporary Polish novelists (almost 40 languages!). Inspired by her interest in psychology and passion for C. G. Jung her prose might not be extremely easy to classify but her intricate, thought-provoking writing has features of psychological narratives and stream of consciousness. In her writing, Tokarczuk isn’t afraid to speak the truth –  she received harsh criticism, hate messages and threats from nationalist circles for her work ‘The Books of Jacob’. When she was awarded the Nobel Prize, the Polish minister of culture admitted that he hadn’t read any of her works – demonstrating once again, that the most vocal critics very often don’t even know what her books are about! If you too, haven’t read any of her books yet, I highly recommend you rush to the nearest bookstore. If your Polish isn’t very good yet – grab an English translation. I’ve read Tokarczuk’s novels both in Polish and English – the translations are excellent and really reflect the character of the original. About storytelling, Tokarczuk says: I believe I must tell stories as if the world were a living, single entity, constantly forming before our eyes, and as if we were a small and at the same time powerful part of it.